That’s What Friends Are For: A feel good novel of best friends and secrets by Marcie Steele

Best friends tell each other everything… right?Sam and Louise have been best friends since they hung their coats side by side on the first day of primary school. Now in their thirties, they’re just as close, but life is a little bit more complicated…

On the outside, thirty-something Sam seems to have it all; the gorgeous husband, the beautiful home and the flourishing business. But things are not quite as rosy as they seem. So when handsome stranger, Dan, walks into her life, Sam finds his attentions hard to resist.

Louise might seem like life and soul of the party, but her outgoing exterior hides her sadness about the heartbreak in her past. She just wants someone to love – but all Louise gets left with is a quick fumble with an ex at the end of the night.

When a glamorous face from the past returns to shake things up, things get even more complicated for Sam and Louise. And just when they need each other the most, they’ve reason to wonder whether they ever really knew each other at all.

An emotional and uplifting tale of love, secrets and the importance of having a best friend.

My Thoughts:

The thing I love about Marcie Steele’s (Mel Sherratt) books are that they are not your typical chick lit novels. Even though there’s some romance in there, her novels are not all fairy tale style stories, they very much resemble what goes on in the real world.

I have to say there are quite a lot of characters that feature throughout this book and to start with I did struggle slightly as there was so much going on and I felt a little lost as the story flicks between them. Once I got used to all of them though I was well and truly hooked.

As I said there are quite a lot of characters but Sam and Louise seem to be the main two that are at the centre of all the others. Sam and Louise have been friends since they were children. They don’t have the perfect friendship and every now and again they get on each others nerves but isn’t that what friendship is really like in the real world? None of us are perfect and there is always going to be something in our personalities or nature that our friends may not agree with or may irk them but it’s all about the whole other bunch of stuff that they do like that is the foundation of a great friendship.

Though many of the characters are either siblings or have known each other from school, the fact that they all now work alongside each other on stalls in the local market is something I loved. The stall holders are a close community that help each other out and are there for one another. Obviously in any working community, gossip is always rife and there will always be someone up to something that they shouldn’t be!

Through Charley, Louise’s fifteen year old daughter, the author makes us very aware of issues that teenagers face in today’s world with social media.

That’s What Friends are For, has really got it all. It’s fun, sweet, serious in parts but more than anything it is realistic. Due to the author keeping the whole story true to real life, the characters are believable and I’m sure there’s more than one of them that readers will be able to relate to or see some of them selves in.

Another great book by one of my favourite authors from 2015.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for an Advanced Readers Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

That’s What Friends Are For is available to purchase from the 11th of December but you can a pre order a copy now on Amazon.

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Published by Sarah Hardy

I'm Sarah, I'm self employed and in my spare time I love to read. Due to my love of reading I thought I would set up a blog to share with people my thoughts on the books i've read.
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